Vasili Sofronov

Vasili Sofronov was a Russian actor of the Bolshoi Drama Teatre in Petrograd - Leningrad - St. Petersburg. He was born Vasili Yakovlevich Sofronov on January 30, 1884, in Russia. In 1910 he made his stage acting debut in St. Petersburg. In 1918 he was among the founding members of the Bolshoi Drama Theatre (BDT) in Petrograd (now St. Petersburg), together with Maxim Gorky, Aleksandr Blok, Yuri Yuryev, and Anatoli Lunacharsky. In 1932 Sofronov made his film debut in Conquerors of the Night (1933) under directorship of Adolf Minkin, however, the film was lost during the turbulent times in the Soviet Union. From 1919 to 1960 Sofronov was a permanent member of the Bolshoi Drama Teatre (BDT) in Petrograd - Leningrad. There his stage partners included many notable Russian actors, such as Aleksei Dikij, Boris Babochkin, Yuri Yuryev, Vitali Politseymako, Zinaida Sharko, Tatyana Doronina, Lyudmila Makarova, Kirill Lavrov, Vladislav Strzhelchik, Innokentiy Smoktunovskiy, Yefim Kopelyan, Oleg Basilashvili, Pavel Luspekayev, Sergey Yurskiy, Evgeniy Lebedev, Vsevolod Kuznetsov, Nikolay Trofimov, Georgiy Shtil, and other actors. Vasili Sofronov was designated People's Actor of the USSR (1956). He was awarded the State Stalin's Prize for his stage work (1951). He died on October 14, 1960, and was laid to rest in Volkovskoe cemetery in St. Petersburg, Russia.